Spoons
Spoons, also known as Pigs or Tongues, is a children’s card game which is fun for people of all ages. Although the game can use spoons, it can be modified to work with other small, safe objects or no objects at all.
Players: 3 – 13
Deck: 1, no jokers
Objective: To hold 4 cards of the same value and grab a spoon first at the end of each hand.
Play: Each player is dealt 4 cards and the remaining cards are placed face down on the table to form the stock pile. 1 less spoon than the number of players is needed (7 spoon for 8 people, 3 spoons for 4 people). Players look at all their cards but do not show them to other players. The spoons will be placed at the center of the table.
Each round is started by the dealer picking 1 card from the discard pile, which is often messy as in Go Fish rather than a neat pile. The dealer will temporarily hold 5 cards before choosing one which he passes to the player to his right. Players will never hold fewer than 4 cards or more than 5 cards.
Sample Hand
This player will then choose a card to discard which he gives to the player to his right. A card will be passed around until the trash, the person to the left of the dealer, has 5 cards. This player will choose one card from his hand to discard to a discard pile. Generally, a player will keep any cards he has 2 or more of and pass unmatched cards.
A player would likely pass the 5, 3, or 9.
The dealer will draw another card from the stock pile and 1 card will pass around the group until the trash, who will discard it. This continues until one player has 4 of a kind.
It’s time to take a spoon.
At this time, the player will take a spoon from the table. He will usually try to do so inconspicuously and may even continue playing if no other player has noticed. When another player notices, he will race to grab another spoon. All but one player will be able to snatch a spoon.
A player can not grab a spoon and leave the table, but if two players grab the same spoon, they can pull away from the table to grab it out of the other’s hand. The player cannot pull more than an arm’s length away from another player.
If a player grabs a spoon and does not have 4 of a kind (and none of the other players has 4 of a kind and grabbed a spoon), he loses the round. Players make fake a grab at the spoons in order to convince other players to grab the spoon mistakenly.
The person who does not have a spoon is eliminated from the round. Play continues until only 2 players remain and the player who gets 4 of a kind first, wins.
Additional rounds may be played with a full deck or will 1 set of 4 of a kind removed. After each round, 1 spoon is eliminated so there is always 1 less spoon than there is players.
The game may be played with a scoring system where players must lose 5 rounds, earning a letter of the word S-P-O-O-N-S each time before finally be eliminated.
Variation:
- Pig
- In a game of pig, a player will touch his nose rather than grab a spoon when he has 4 of a kind. Instead of playing rounds to spell SPOONS, the player will get 3 chances and loses when he has earned the letters P-I-G.
- Tongues
- In a game of tongues, players stick out there tongues instead of grabbing spoons. The game loser has earned all the letters to spell T-O-N-G-U-E-S.
- Other Objects
- If spoons are not available other objects are used such as glasses, silverware, pens, corks (as in the French version where players spell B-O-U-C-H-O-N), straws et cetera. Players will spell out the names of the object rather than S-P-O-O-N-S.
- Throwing Spoons
- If a player grabs a spoon without other players noticing, he may throw the spoons at them to give them the hint.
- Sweeping
- A person may reach for a far spoon and, in the process, move the other spoons further away from other players.
